


Saving Sousuke's Life

by SamCyberCat



Category: Free!
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-26
Updated: 2017-05-26
Packaged: 2018-11-05 05:51:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11007306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SamCyberCat/pseuds/SamCyberCat
Summary: Clothes shopping is not a skill that Sousuke possesses and is something that he'll entirely avoid doing unless he's forced to do it. It's a good thing that Kisumi is more knowledgeable in that area and willing to lend him a hand.





	Saving Sousuke's Life

**Author's Note:**

> I'm going to be posting three Kisumi-related fics for his birthday. So here's some SouKisu to start them off.

“I'm here to save your life!”

If it was anyone else, Sousuke might have just shut the door again, but he'd known Kisumi since they were both too young to remember, so he gave him the benefit of the doubt. All the same, his eyebrow raised in that particular way that made it very clear to someone who could read Sousuke that he was vaguely confused. And Kisumi was fluent in the language of Sousuke.

“Wasn't aware that I was in any kind of danger,” Sousuke said.

“That makes it all the more tragic,” replied Kisumi, before gesturing to all of Sousuke, “I mean, look at you. It's practically too late already.”

“Kisumi, I have no idea what you're talking about,” Sousuke grumbled. He took a look down at himself as Kisumi gestured to see the old, worn trousers and the Christmas-gift-from-a-well-meaning-relative sweater with the slight stain on his sleeve, which earlier that morning he'd decided wasn't too noticeable. But under the scrutiny of Kisumi the stain was probably like a big, flashing radar. He sighed; “...This is about clothes, isn't it?”

“Look, Sousuke, I know it isn't your fault,” said Kisumi, “We can't all be good at everything. But when you're not good at something, you need to hold up your hand and admit it. You need to come to your dearest friend Kisumi and ask him to take you clothes shopping before its too late.”

“I don't need you to take me clothes shopping. I'm a grown-ass man, I can do it myself,” Sousuke reminded him.

“But you don't, do you?” Kisumi said. When Sousuke didn't reply, he carried on, “Come on, I've known you for years. When you were a kid, your mother always did it until you were old enough and moody enough to decided that was no good. And ever since then you've always just waited around until Rin could take you and hope for the best. But Rin's not here right now and I can't watch you suffer any longer.”

As much as he hated to admit it, Sousuke knew that Kisumi's assessment wasn't wrong. Even so, he wasn't going to give up without a fight.

“I'm not suffering. I'm fine with the clothes I have now,” he insisted.

“But I'm suffering!” Kisumi protested.

“That sounds a lot like your problem,” said Sousuke, trying his best to stop himself from smirking.

“Ugh... if you don't come with me then I'll make it your problem,” Kisumi warned him, “I'll go ahead and buy what I think you might like without your input and then gift it to you, so you'll have to wear it because it'll be a present and you'll feel obligated. Don't make me do that, Sousuke. Don't make me buy you presents to invoke your guilt.”

“Yeah, that does sound awful,” agreed Sousuke, “And I'd feel bad if you had to spend all your money on me... Okay fine, I'll come. But only if you're buying me lunch.”

“Well, I just so happen to have discount coupons for the Ed Phoenix Steakhouse anyway, so maybe that was always my intention,” Kisumi replied. He gave Sousuke a wink which Sousuke felt right down to his stomach. What gave this guy the right?

...So that was how Sousuke ended up clothes shopping with Kisumi. Who he had to admit had a decent eye for style anyway, given that Sousuke rarely saw him wearing anything less than flawless. Though that might have been because Kisumi was the type of person who just made everything look good. He could probably have come to Sousuke's door wearing a bin bag and still pulled it off, though maybe he'd take that the wrong way if Sousuke told him so.

Whereas Sousuke... took a bit more work. Apparently. To him, what he wore always looked fine, but it wasn't the first time he'd been assured that he had no sense of style and Kisumi was far from the only person to tell him that. Not that it usually bothered Sousuke, since he cared more about what he was doing than what he was wearing, but it would bring him some peace of mind to have a few Kisumi-approved outfits, since that guy clearly knew his stuff.

The downside of Kisumi knowing the ins and outs of fashion meant that it took too damn long to decide upon anything. If it had been just Sousuke (well, all right, if it had been Sousuke and Rin, because he'd never have come here on his own) then he'd have been finished in about ten minutes, if that. But with Kisumi, they must have been in the same shop for almost an hour. The steakhouse on the other side of the street had never looked further away...

Another shirt was pressed up to his chest and Sousuke grunted.

“Are you almost ready yet?” he asked.

“No... this is, like, the right kind of style, but totally not your colour,” Kisumi replied, “You have a very specific palette and it just... doesn't seem to be in this season, which is why it's taking so long to find anything.”

“What about the discount rack?” said Sousuke.

“I mean, I guess. But wouldn't you rather have something fresh?” Kisumi answered.

“Eh, I'd rather have whatever gets us finished quickest,” Sousuke admitted.

“You can't rush perfection,” said Kisumi.

“Then can I rush us?” Sousuke retorted.

“You just have an answer for everything, don't you?” Kisumi replied, “You know what'd make this go faster? If you actually tried something on instead of just standing here like a board while I hold it all up against you. So why don't you just take a selection from our shortlist pile and try it on?”

“Sounds good to me,” Sousuke said.

He'd agreed to that in the hope of getting things moving, but as he looked at the apparent shortlist, he realised that it might have been a mistake. It was the longest shortlist that he'd ever seen in his life, with so many shirts and trousers that were supposedly almost there, but just not quite. Yet he'd make them work. He'd find something that would impress Kisumi so that the two of them could get out of here before the best part of the day was over.

With that resolve, Sousuke grabbed a handful from the pile and headed towards the changing room, dropping belts as he went. Kisumi followed along behind him, picking up everything that fell to the floor and apologising to shop assistants as he did.

Once he was inside the booth, Sousuke grabbed at the first set of trousers and shirt that he could and pulled them on, before drawing back the curtain so that Kisumi can see. He noted that Kisumi looked distinctly unimpressed.

“Did you even look in the mirror?” Kisumi asked.

Sousuke pulled the curtain closed again as a response. Then he... did look in the mirror and realised that orange and green probably wasn't his ideal colour combination. Maybe Kisumi was right about all that jazz after all. So he took them off, threw them into their own pile for rejected options and tried again, this time making sure he at least inspected himself before opening the curtain.

“How about these?” he checked.

“Sousuke, you're just wearing the shoes you came in,” Kisumi pointed out.

“You never said that shoes were part of the deal,” Sousuke replied.

“No, you're right. I can't expect you to work with nothing. They had a shoe department just over there and I know your size, so just give me a moment to get you some pairs to try,” said Kisumi.

“Wait, you don't... have to...”

But by the time he'd said that, Kisumi was already gone. Okay, that just meant that he had more time to try again. Sousuke went back into the booth, pulled off the second offending outfit and threw it down into the discarded pile. He could do this. He dressed himself everyday. It wasn't hard.

Kisumi went on about how he had some kind of colour palette, right? Admittedly Sousuke wasn't sure what it was, but he knew that Kisumi tended to gravitate towards pale blues and greens for him, so that was probably a good place to start. And Sousuke had his own preference for darker trousers, so he went with his instincts on that one.

After a few minutes, several pairs of shoes were pushed under the curtain, which marked Kisumi's return.

“It was kind of short notice, but I think they'll do,” Kisumi called through.

They would do. Sousuke would make sure of it. He took the first pair that he came across, shuffled into them and then gave the entire outfit a once-over in the mirror. As far as he could tell, he looked all right. Definitely the best one that he'd tried so far. Hopefully Kisumi would feel the same way.

He pulled back the curtain and stood there, nervously ready for his inspection.

“I mean... it looks fine,” Kisumi said, “If you're going for Mr. Vanilla. But I figured you'd want to try something a little more adventurous.”

“I'll give you adventurous...” Sousuke muttered, as he stalked back into the booth and pulled the curtain closed again.

“Please do!” Kisumi called after him. Damn this guy.

Why had he agreed to something like that? Sousuke didn't know what adventurous clothes were. Sousuke didn't know what any of this was at all. He took off his current outfit and placed it in a new sod-this-I'm-buying-these-anyway pile and then hunted through the clothes he hadn't tried yet for something that might fit the bill. The bright colours hadn't gone down well earlier, so he kept away from those, instead going for a dark brown and white print shirt that looked... stylish? Did it look stylish? Sousuke hoped so. He put it on all the same, before grabbing a belt that seemed to go with it and another pair of black trousers. In Sousuke's eyes, you couldn't go wrong with black trousers.

“This any good?” he asked, pulling the curtain back.

“I can see that you're trying now,” Kisumi replied, a small smile having formed as he looked.

“That means you don't like it?” Sousuke said.

“Well, I don't... not like it?” Kisumi hesitantly replied.

“Why did you put it in the pile if you don't like it?” demanded Sousuke.

“Because that's what this is about – trying things out to see what works. You have a great figure, Sousuke, but even I can't say what exactly will work just by seeing something on a rack,” Kisumi answered.

“I'll... give it another go then...” Sousuke mumbled.

He disappeared back into the booth feeling a bit more embarrassed than before. God, he shouldn't be getting so flustered just because Kisumi said he had a great figure. That was the kind of comment that Kisumi came out with all the time. It didn't actually mean anything.

Sousuke looked into the mirror and thought about Kisumi. Then he thought about the steakhouse, which was apparently his objective in all of this. In order to get there he had to impress Kisumi and maybe he'd been going about that entirely the wrong way. Because as much as Kisumi knew Sousuke, Sousuke knew Kisumi right back. He should know how to appeal to the guy.

In his next attempt, Sousuke went back to the kind of clothes that Kisumi had accused of being vanilla. Because at least Sousuke knew where he stood with those. But the key difference was that this time Sousuke didn't do up all of the buttons on the shirt. He left the top two, so that only a slight bit of teasing collarbone was on display. Then he went out.

“Well?” he prompted.

Kisumi's eyes flickered onto the exposed collarbone for slightly longer than the rest of it. Sousuke had got it right.

“Looks good,” Kisumi said, “But we didn't come here just to get you one outfit, right? I know you're bored out of your mind, but the more we pick up today, the longer it'll be until we have to do this again.”

“All right, I'll see what else I can find,” Sousuke replied.

That time he went back into the booth feeling satisfied. Even if it meant that he wouldn't be leaving as quickly as he wanted, Kisumi was right that the more he did now, the less he'd have to do later. And now he had the method to get through this. All he had to do was flirt with Kisumi. Using clothes. Couldn't be too hard, right?

The next few outfits went with similar success, though it didn't take long for Kisumi to become wise to what he was up to with the buttons and that seemed to grant him some kind of immunity. Which meant that Sousuke had to come up with increasingly desperate ways to make each outfit look attractive, with a bit of exposed torso here and a slightly too tight pair of jeans there.

He thought he was doing so well, until one time he came out and Kisumi only just managed to hold back his giggles, shaking slightly as he did.

“Sousuke, I know what you're up to,” Kisumi said.

“I'm not up to anything,” insisted Sousuke.

“You haven't even properly done up your fly this time. There's trying to flirt and then there's just too eager,” Kisumi teased.

“I'm not... flirting with you,” Sousuke huffed, reaching down to pull up his fly without any shame, “Just trying to find something you like, you know?”

Kisumi shook his head; “I've been looking at something I like this whole time, it's just a matter of finding what you're happy with.”

“Look, I'm happy with anything, I always am,” assured Sousuke, while he tried his best not to let Kisumi's comment about liking him get to him too much. That was just Kisumi, after all; “But you seemed so unimpressed at first. I had to find something.”

“Yeah, and for the last few outfits you've mostly been picking out exactly what you like and what looks good on you, instead of just settling for just whatever. I'd call that a success,” said Kisumi.

When Sousuke looked over his shoulder, back into the booth, he realised that Kisumi was right about that. A lot of what he'd picked out did seem to follow a similar theme and none of it seemed that bad. Maybe Kisumi had tricked a sense of style out of him after all. Stranger things had happened.

“So... we're done?” Sousuke said, hardly even daring to believe it.

“We're done. Just go get changed back into your old clothes and gather up whatever you're buying. We can leave everything else on the rack by the door,” Kisumi replied.

They were actually finished. Sousuke had successfully gone clothes shopping with Kisumi and lived to tell the tale. That left him elated, but he suddenly realised that it wasn't because he was one step closer to getting lunch. In fact, he hadn't been thinking about it for a while now. All that he'd been thinking about was how to look good for Kisumi and Kisumi's varying degrees of interest in response to that. Why had he thought that working Kisumi up was the best solution to his problem? It had worked, but not without... also coming back onto him. Dammit.

“Hey, so... do you want to come into the booth with me?” Sousuke asked, wishing that he wasn't so awkward.

“Sousuke...! We can't do that here...” Kisumi hissed. Though Sousuke noted that he was looking around to make sure that the coast was clear.

“It's either here or in the public toilets,” replied Sousuke.

“You really are such a romantic, you know that?” teased Kisumi.

“You coming or not?”

Sousuke turned and went back into the booth, pulling the curtain closed behind him. He hadn't even bent down to take off his trousers before Kisumi shuffled through to join him. He could see Kisumi biting his lip from in the mirror, so Sousuke smirked at him through it.

“We're going to get into so much trouble,” Kisumi warned.

Which didn't seem to stop him from walking around to undo the rest of the buttons on Sousuke's shirt. He then gently stroked his hand down Sousuke's chest, which made Sousuke shiver. His heart was racing, he felt so hot. Maybe if they got this out of the way quickly then they'd have less risk of being thrown out before Sousuke could buy the clothes he'd gone to such effort to pick out.

“The staff didn't seem to be paying that much attention anyway,” he said, as he put his arms around Kisumi.

That seemed to be all of the reassurance that Kisumi needed. He reached across to kiss Sousuke, the two of them pressing into each other and allowing some of the built up tension to slip away. Sousuke could feel Kisumi's hands working their way down his back, a single finger sliding across his spine. This guy was always unfair. Sousuke moaned into the kiss and Kisumi chuckled in response. Then they broke away. Sousuke had to recover this somehow.

“...I'll pay for lunch,” he heard himself say, “We can still use your coupons though.”

Smooth, Sousuke, so smooth...

Kisumi's reply was to stroke his hands over the back of Sousuke's trousers, which felt ridiculously tight now. He squeezed at his arse and relished when Sousuke whimpered. Okay, so there was no way Sousuke was recovering from anything like this.

“Sure, if you want. But lunch has been the last thing on my mind all day,” Kisumi purred.

Once again, Sousuke was left without a comeback. So instead he followed the conclusion he'd reached earlier and stuck with what he knew. He went back into another kiss, gently guiding them until they were pressed up against the mirror. Kisumi all but melted against him as the two of them continued, spurred on by the looming threat that they had to be done before they got caught.

All in all, it was easily one of the best shopping trips that Sousuke had been on. Even if the steakhouse was closed by the time they were done. They just settled for finding a pizza place on the way back to Kisumi's apartment. Which turned out to be where they were going, even with all the bags of Sousuke's clothes. He was hardly going to complain.

They walked up the steps to the door, arms loaded down with bags and pizza boxes. Somehow Kisumi managed to slump up against Sousuke as they walked, with Sousuke supporting him as he reached down to unlock the door.

“Hey, thanks for this,” Sousuke muttered, once the door clicked open.

“The pizza, the clothes or the other thing?” hummed Kisumi.

“All of it. Thanks for coming to rescue me or whatever it was that you said this morning,” replied Sousuke.

“Saving your life?” Kisumi corrected.

“Yeah, that. Turns out you're good at this,” said Sousuke.

The two of them stumbled through into the apartment, the shopping bags being dumped down as soon as they were through the door. Only the sacred pizza boxes remained held aloft, their contents ready to be devoured as soon as they were settled.

Then Kisumi turned to look at Sousuke and gave him a smile that he felt in a completely different way to the heat from earlier. At some point Sousuke was going to have to properly assess what this guy did to him.

“Turns out you're good at knowing what to say,” Kisumi replied.

And as usual, Sousuke was left assuming that if Kisumi felt that way, then hopefully he was right. But either way, they had pizza and each other and Sousuke was going to be well-dressed for at least the next few months, so he wasn't going to complain.


End file.
